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The Late AL Davis..

Came across this article in one of my fantasy FB sites. Some may have heard the story and others may have not. Either way, you gota love the late A.D. Does anyone else remember stories of AL they can share

The second story involves Mike Shanahan and Steve Young throwing a football at Raiders owner Al Davis. You probably know that Davis famously fired Shanahan as Raiders coach and refused to pay him the remaining $250,000 of his contract.

Shanahan moved on to take the offensive coordinator job with San Francisco and found himself with an "opportunity" before a 49'ers - Raiders game when Al Davis walked over to the San Francisco side of the field in pre game warm ups.

Myers relays the story that Shanahan told him about how the San Francisco players didn't like the Raiders owner being there.

The end of the 49ers' pregame drill took them back to their own 5-yard line. Davis was standing 35 yards away. "Hey, get him out of there," the players said to Shanahan. Shanahan was pissed at Davis for disrupting his pregame routine. And surely he was still pissed at him for not paying him the $250,000. "Now I started thinking. Okay, so we got one more play left," Shanahan said.

Shanahan is telling this story seated behind his desk at Redskins Park. It's a quiet spring day, but suddenly he's animated. On the sideline, Shanahan's face gets red, and it looks like the veins are about to pop out of his neck when he gets mad. Off the field, you rarely see his emotional side. But he had no use for Davis. Davis had embarrassed him by firing him almost without giving him a chance, and during that pregame Shanahan wanted to put a scare into his nemesis. Shanahan came up with the idea of how to send Davis back to his side of the field and needed one of his quarterbacks to be his accomplice. Young said he was more than happy to oblige.

"Throw a go route," Shanahan told Young. "If you happen to hit that guy in the white outfit with the ball, you won't make me mad." The receiver was Jerry Rice. He ran the go route. Shanahan didn't really want to drill Davis. But if it happened, maybe he would never stand on the 49ers' side of the field again. Of course, if he hit Davis, Shanahan would never get his $250,000. Young dropped back to pass. He threw the ball in Davis' direction. Rice, whom Shanahan did not bring into the loop on this little bit of mischief, was running downfield, looking up for the ball. He was not looking at Davis. He didn't see Davis. Shanahan saw the ball. He saw the receiver. He saw Davis. All three were about to occupy the same spot. Shanahan thought Davis saw the ball coming. He did not.

"Oh, my God," Shanahan said. "I wanted to scare him. I didn't want to kill him." The ball and the receiver were closing in on Davis. "Al realizes that the ball and everybody is coming at him about five yards before there is going to be contact," Shanahan said. "I think he's going to be run over. And he dives; he actually dives out of the way. Well, half of our players see what happens, and they are all laughing." Young drilled Davis in the leg.

It was not surprising that he found his target. Young completed 64.3 percent of his passes in his career. "Ten years after this happened, I was walking out of a stadium on a Monday night, and Al came up to me," Young said. "He told me that he knew it was me." Young told Davis that he was ashamed of himself, more so than with anything else he had ever done. He then sent him a letter of apology.

Shanahan is so fired up that he gets out of his seat to finish the story. He loves this story. It was revenge. He explains in great detail Davis diving on the grass at Candlestick Park, getting to his feet, his hair falling down in front of his face. Davis stared him down from 35 yards away and gave him the middle finger."

Lmao! F shannahan lol that's funny though I was at the Raiders game in Oakland the weekend after Gene Upshaw passed away. Al Davis and his group of body guards and police just happened to be walking by and a large group of us saw him. He stopped dead in his tracks after we all kind of rushed to get a picture of him and gave a 5 or so minute speech about the loss of Upshaw and how he had helped the franchise. It was really cool. I was about 2 feet away from him. His authoritative voice boomed so we all could hear him.

Don't like me?

Go have a seat with the rest of the putas waiting for me to give a flying fk.

Lmao! F shannahan lol that's funny though I was at the Raiders game in Oakland the weekend after Gene Upshaw passed away. Al Davis and his group of body guards and police just happened to be walking by and a large group of us saw him. He stopped dead in his tracks after we all kind of rushed to get a picture of him and gave a 5 or so minute speech about the loss of Upshaw and how he had helped the franchise. It was really cool. I was about 2 feet away from him. His authoritative voice boomed so we all could hear him.

NIce, I wish I could have met him or even just been as close as you were. At one point, he was one of the greatest football minds. Im sure he told lots of good stories....

second highest passer rating in the history of the league....
led the league in passing 6 times...
6 TDs in a SB...
two time MVP....
The guy was pretty freakin good,AND
if you extrapolate out his starting numbers in SF to include the years he sat behind Montana(yardage and TDs)
he would be top 5 in both categories,having played almost only half as long as Farve did.

In the end, Shanahan got the better of Al. Lets just leave it at that...its all ancient history now.

BTW....Steve Young might be the best QB I've ever seen.

-Stork

I really agree with you on this Stork. I actually use Steve Young as an example whenever I hear people talking about Peyton Manning being one of the greatest (if not the greatest) QB to play the game..

I say, "Would you take him over Steve Young?" And nine times out of ten it's a no. Steve Young was a great ****ing quarterback. One of the best I ever saw.

Was actually able to watch him beat Peyton Manning in his rookie year @ Candlestick. Came back from a 20pt deficit to win the game. I was 8 years old. And that was awesome. Sorry...just had to share that.

I respectfully disagree with this. I may have not been alive when the greatest Qb's (Montana, Unitas) were playing...but I know I'd take Steve Young over any starting QB the NFL has had the past 10 years at least. And that's got to be worth something. Favre, Brady, Brees, Manning(s), Roethilisberger..all great QB's. But they are no Steve Young.

Shanahan being fired was the beginning of the end. Al backed off his instincts and went the safe route with Art Shell. This was the juncture in the road in where Al quit being visionary and started becoming mortal.